Now Franken is lying about Howard Kurtz

Alan Skorski , Author of Pants on Fire ^ | June 23, 2005 | Alan Skorski

[lward99]

This is really an incredible story.

Back on June 8 and again on the 21, Franken attacked as "scandalous," Bill O'Reilly as having taken an interview of Joe Biden by "stephy" Stepahnopoulos on the issue of prison abuse at Gitmo and whether the prison should be shut down, and edited out key words from the interview. Among the points that O'Reilly "edited" out was Biden's calling for a commission to investigate the accusations. But O'Reilly himself has called for a commission and it looks like, according to Franken, that O'Reilly claimed Biden's idea as his own.

Further, Franken claimed that when he tried to peddle this story to Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post and CNN's 'Reliable Sources,' Kurtz replied, "well, they do that all the time."

Here is the truth:

1.While O'Reilly did edit some of Biden's interview, the context was in no way altered - Biden did support the closing down of Gitmo.

2.Yes, Biden called for a commission - but he wanted a commission that would report back that the allegations of abuse were true and that Gitmo should be closed down. O'Reilly, on the other hand, called on the president to appoint a commission in the belief that they would exxonerate the troops and put all the rumors to rest.

3. In an email exchange with Howard Kurtz, he denied saying anything resembling what Franken attributed to him. What Kurtz claimed he said was, "these charges are made against Fox (and others) all the time.

[lward99]

Franken is the worst, Thank God someone is taking him to task.

[CO Gal]

Readymade headlines: Franken caught lying about _________;
Dems BLAST Bush about ______________; Undocumented Worker at large for (fill in the blank crime). What else am I missing??

[BIRDS]

Yeah, Franken has made a career out of using the dumb-funny-silly personna useful to proliferate quite seriously offensive content. Meaning, he seems to fool enough people often enough that he's just a comedian, while using a certain comedic personna to deliver quite intense and irrational political content. I'm glad to read that more and more conservatives see and easily through his ruse. And it is a ruse.

Franken's entire career reminds me of the "Captain Howdy" demon from "The Exorcist": start off like an entertaining friend to the disenfranchised and lonely and then the hook is set.